About Me

I trained as an English and Drama teacher, and have worked with every age group from nursery through to Post Graduate. I am a doctor (not a useful one who saves lives, but an academic version) and I love teaching – whether teaching teachers about teaching or teaching children about the world.

My first book, Teaching : Notes from the Frontline is currently available. It is an act of pedagogical activism as I think proper change takes place in classrooms not in offices. And we are in control of our classrooms every day.

“It’s a book I wish I had written … Get your hands on a copy now!”

My second book, Becoming Mobius, was published in June 2015 and is now available. Delving much more deeply into the philosophical position of ‘Notes from the Frontline’. This is a book about complexity in the class room.

In 2014, I set up Northern Rocks with @emmaannhardy – a teaching and learning conference aimed at bringing teachers together in the North of England with some of the leading voices in education. We were a band of pedagogical bandits and it was wonderful, so we’re doing another one. The next Northern Rocks conference will take place on June 11th 2016. Here’s a little taster of the last one:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P40bFzgOeNY

I have one mantra for learning and that is ‘Make it Matter.’ Not a single piece of knowledge that mankind has ever aqcuired came without a desire to know the answer to a question. We have to give children the impetus to want to know, to understand the imperative that drove the discovery – the story behind the glory.

I write a regular column for TEACHER PRIMARY and have contributed to the Time TES and Teach Secondary.